Murder on the Silk Road (32 page)

Charlotte thought of the twisted corpse of the mummified donkey at the side of the asphalt, and shuddered. Then she grabbed Marsha’s arm and fled.

The passageway led to another cave, which in turn was linked to another. Running at full speed, they passed from one cave to another. They had no idea how close Victor was behind them—the deafening roar of the storm drowned out any sound. At the third cave, they ran up against a blank wall.

“We’ll have to go outside,” said Charlotte.

Turning the bolt in the lock, Charlotte opened the door. Fortunately, the storm had momentarily abated, allowing them to see their immediate surroundings. As a waterfall of sand and pebbles from the top of the cliff rained down on their heads, Charlotte took stock of their situation. They had emerged onto a veranda that was linked to a series of balconies and stairways that led across the cliff face to the Cave of Unequaled Height, about forty feet away. From here, there was no route down. They would have to take one of the staircases in the big cave.

Suddenly they heard the sound of running footsteps on the other side of the wall. Victor was right behind them.

Where was Jack now with his flares? thought Charlotte as she looked around for something that would help them. Then she spotted an old rafter next to Marsha that must have blown down from up above. “There!” she said, pointing the beam of her flashlight at it. “We’ll use it to bar the door.”

Marsha quickly passed the rafter over to Charlotte.

“This won’t stop him, but it should slow him down,” said Charlotte as she propped one end of the rafter under the knob of the cave door and the other against the cement base of the balcony railing. Instead of chasing them along the cliff face, Victor would have to backtrack to the previous cave and exit from there, which would mean taking a stairway down to another route that also led across the cliff face to the Cave of Unqualed Height, but a couple of levels below. By then, they would be well ahead of him.

With Charlotte in the lead, they headed up a stairway toward the big cave. Behind them, they could hear the thudding of Victor’s shoulder being pounded against the door as he tried to force it. They were barely midway across the cliff face when the storm burst upon them with renewed vengeance. Sharp particles of gravel blasted their faces, and the wind sounded like a thousand shrieking voices. Charlotte could now see why this was called the Mountain of the Howling Sands. Slowly they groped their way across the cliff face through the blinding murk. They couldn’t see—not even the floor beneath them—and it was difficult to breathe. At last, they reached the door on the other side.

The door opened onto the eighth story of the nine-story cave, at about the height of the colossal Buddha’s neck. Unlike the other caves, which were pitch-black, this cave was faintly lit by the votive candles on the altar at the Buddha’s feet more than a hundred feet below. From above, the face of the Buddha gazed down through half-closed eyes like an apparition. A swirling haze of sand that had blown in through the openings in the front wall of the pagoda-like building hung in the air, and the wind chimes jangled wildly.

“Buddha be praised,” said Marsha, looking up at the colossal figure.

“And pass the ammunition,” added Charlotte.

The stairwell was pitch-dark. With her flashlight, Charlotte led the way down the mud brick steps. If Victor had already reached the cave, he would be waiting for them at the foot of this set of stairs. But the chances of that were practically nil. If he’d had to backtrack, he should have been far behind them.

When they came to the bottom, she breathed a sigh of relief—not that she had really expected him to be waiting for them there.

She had just turned to descend the next flight of stairs when an arm reached out and grabbed her, and pulled her back behind the wall that separated the cave from the stairwell. A hand was slapped over her mouth to keep her from screaming.
Damn!
The only noise she succeeded in making was a piglike grunt, which was hardly enough to warn Marsha over the roar of the storm. Nor could she move, as much as she struggled. Her assailant was frighteningly strong, and held her right arm in a hammerlock. She was pondering her predicament when it dawned on her that the man who was holding her wasn’t Victor. Victor was her height—five feet eight, or even less—this man was at least six four. She could feel the back of her head pressing against the button on his shirt front—a hard metal button, the button of a Western shirt. She could also feel the bristle of a beard against the back of her head, and she could smell the sweet smell of pipe tobacco on the hand that was cupped over her mouth.

The man who was holding her was Bert!

A wave of suffocating paranoia swept over her. It was Bert whom she had always meant to question, Bert who had been absent from his room on the morning Larry was killed. She suddenly remembered Bert pulling a knife out of the holster on his belt to scrape the sandstone from the jawbone of the
Protoceratops
skull. Why hadn’t she thought of that knife before? she asked herself. Then she wondered if he had it now. A spate of other questions coursed through her mind. Could it really have been Bert who murdered Larry? Was he somehow in league with Victor? If so, what was their joint interest? But none of the answers made any sense. Poetic, courteous, dedicated Bert. The Bert who loved Marsha, the Bert who might even have been her stepson-in-law one day. But if he wasn’t in league with Victor, what was he doing in this cave at three o’clock in the morning trying to squeeze her to death? The hammerlock on her right arm was so tight that she thought her shoulder was going to be wrenched out of its socket.

These thoughts took just a few seconds to race through her mind, the same few seconds it took Marsha to reach the foot of the stairs. Though she couldn’t hear Marsha’s footsteps over the roar of the storm, she could see the beam of Marsha’s flashlight as she approached the foot of the stairs. If Bert let go of her to grab Marsha, she would be able to make a run for it, she thought. But she didn’t get her chance. A second later, Bert backed slowly away from the edge of the wall, with Charlotte still in tow, to make room at the head of the stairs for Dogie, who was just behind them. So loud was the storm that Charlotte hadn’t realized he’d been standing only a couple of feet away. As Marsha turned to descend the next flight of stairs, Dogie lunged out and grabbed her, and then quickly slapped a hand across her mouth.

What was going to happen now? thought Charlotte, who as a consequence of over forty years in front of the cameras had a tendency to view the more dramatic events of her life—and there had been more than her share of them—as if they were elements of a plot that was unfolding on the screen. Critics of her personal character, who included two of her ex-husbands, considered this attitude a symptom of her lack of grasp on reality; but she preferred to think of them as being overreactive. The fact was that there was little that she took in life—including the prospect of her own death (especially at this age, when she had already lived a far more rich and exciting life then she ever could have hoped for)—as sufficently serious to warrant getting upset about. Which wasn’t to deny that she was scared.

As a victim of too many screen assaults to count, she knew her options: she could kick Bert in the shins, she could jab him in the ribs, or, if she could pull his hand down far enough, she could bite his thumb. If she could get at her pocket, she could also stab him with Marsha’s awl, but for now her pocket was out of reach. None of the first three options were likely to get her anywhere—even if she did get away, he would probably catch her. They might even get her in worse trouble: he might decide to hit back. But doing something was better than doing nothing.

She decided on all three, at once. After counting slowly to ten to muster her courage, she seized Bert’s wrist and pulled down on it, hard. That maneuver didn’t work: his hand didn’t budge. But her others did. “Jesus,” he muttered as she simultaneously kicked him in the shins and elbowed him in the ribs. Still holding his hand over her mouth, he spun her around to face him. Raising a finger to his lips, he pointed at the staircase leading down to the next level. Then he mouthed the word, “Danowski,” and let her go.

Turning around, he repeated this for Marsha.

Of course! Bert and Dogie were their rescuers, just as the
I Ching
had predicted. “Precisely in this extremity,” three rescuers would come to her aid, it had said. There were only two, but she wasn’t complaining. How could she have been stupid enough to think that Bert was in league with Victor? But how had Bert and Dogie known they were here? she wondered. Then she realized what must have happened. Bert must have been in Marsha’s room when she left for their midnight mission. Either she told him what she was up to or he figured it out for himself. In any case, when the
buran
hit, he had gotten worried and had solicited Dogie’s aid in looking for her. They must have seen Charlotte and Marsha blockading the door to the cave, and concluded that something was amiss when they saw Victor taking off after them a few minutes later.

Bert and Dogie had moved up in front of Charlotte and Marsha, and were lying in wait for Victor at the head of the stairwell. Charlotte still hadn’t figured out how he had reached the big cave so quickly. Seconds later, she saw Bert’s body stiffen. Then he lunged again, but this time he was jumping an armed man who was ready to kill, not an unarmed woman. After a brief struggle, Bert managed to get the knife away from Victor, but even with Dogie’s help, he wasn’t able to pin him down. The three men struggled on the floor of the cave for what seemed like an eternity but was actually only a few minutes. Finally Victor broke away, and went running past Charlotte and Marsha toward the nearest exit, which was the door to the balcony. His plan was clearly to cross the balcony, reenter the cave on the other side, and descend the other stairway.

Bert took off after him. Dogie was about to follow when he was stopped by Charlotte.

“Go that way,” she said, directing him to the catwalk spanning the front of the cave and linking the platforms on either side of the enormous statue. If Dogie could get to the platform on the other side before Victor, he could block his access to the stairs. And if the ferocity of its roar was any indication, the storm was bound to slow Victor down.

A second later, Victor had opened the door to the balcony, letting in a cold rush of sand.

“Come on,” said Charlotte, shouting in Marsha’s ear to be heard above the howl of the storm. “We can watch from there.” She pointed at the windowlike aperture that opened off of the catwalk.

“I don’t know if I want to watch,” Marsha shouted back.

Following in Dogie’s footsteps, they made their way across the catwalk to the opening, which by day let light into the dark chamber. Now all it let in was a dark, swirling cloud of sand and gravel. At first, they couldn’t see anything. Then they saw a slight, wind-whipped figure slowly making its way across the balcony. And behind it another figure—taller, and burly.

“Where’s Dogie?” asked Marsha.

“There,” said Charlotte. A bandy-legged figure with a beer belly had just materialized out of the sand cloud at the other end of the balcony.

“All right, Percival,” Charlotte shouted through cupped hands.

Though he hadn’t yet realized it, Victor was fenced in. Bert was closing in from the rear, and Dogie from the front.

As they watched, Victor turned around to see if Bert was gaining on him, and then, as he turned back, caught sight of Dogie. For a second, he froze. Then he started looking around him—down over the edge of the railing, and up at the opening at which they were standing. Then he tucked his knife into his belt, and crouched down in preparation for a jump.

“He’s going to try and climb up here!” said Marsha.

The opening, which was only a few feet above the level of the catwalk, was protected by a wrought-iron grate that reached about halfway up. In order to get back into the cave, Victor would have to catch hold of the iron grate, and pull himself up. What they needed was a baseball bat to hit him over the head with, but there wasn’t even a loose brick lying around.

“We’ll have to push him over,” said Charlotte, speaking into Marsha’s ear to be heard above the storm. “You get on that side, and I’ll get on this side. When I give the signal”—she raised her forefinger—“put your foot up against his shoulder, and push.”

Seconds later, Victor leaped up onto the grate as agilely as a monkey leaping onto a bough. As he leaned forward to get enough purchase to pull himself over, Charlotte gave the signal. Bracing themselves against the window jamb, she and Marsha simultaneously put their feet on his shoulders and pushed.

“Shit,” he muttered into the wind.

For a few seconds, they pushed and he resisted. It was like pushing against a weight machine at a gym, except that Victor was stronger. Charlotte could see his knuckles turning white with the exertion of hanging on. But finally he had to let go, and he dropped back down onto the balcony.

“Good work!” shouted Dogie, who by now was only a few feet away.

But Victor’s attempt to climb up had given him another idea: to climb down instead. With Bert and Dogie closing in, he quickly climbed over the balcony railing and inched himself down on his hands and knees toward the edge of the red-tiled roof that overhung the balcony on the preceding level. If he was lucky, he would be able to get to the stairwell on the level below before Bert and Dogie could get to him. But it was a big if: it was at least a ten-foot drop, and the fierce winds could easily pick him up and fling him into the void. And even if he did get away, what would he do then? It wouldn’t be easy for a murderer to escape from an oasis in the Gobi without going through the desert itself. And the perils of traveling in the desert in a sandstorm were notorious, as he had pointed out himself.

At the edge, he carefully lowered himself over. Charlotte could only see his hands, but she could guess what he intended to do. Recessed below each of the roofs that gave the structure its pagoda-like appearance was an ornate latticework cornice of red-painted wood. If he could fling his feet forward far enough to get a foothold in the openings in the latticework, he could then work himself over like a monkey on the wall of a cage to one of the supporting columns, and shimmy down.